The popularity of the Internet, coupled with the increasing capabilities of personal/mobile electronic devices, has provided consumers with the ability to enjoy multimedia content almost anytime and anywhere. For example, live content (e.g., sports events) and video on demand (VOD) content (e.g., television shows and movies) can be streamed via the Internet to personal electronic devices (e.g., computers, mobile phones, Internet-enabled televisions, etc.). Various types of personal electronic devices are available to consumers. Different devices may have different screen sizes and may be compatible with different audio formats, video formats, streaming protocols, wireless connection speeds, etc.
VOD systems often provide preview frames corresponding to certain portions of a video. The preview frames can be used during seek operations. For example, when a user rewinds or fast-forwards the video, the preview frames can be used to show an approximate location within the video that the user has rewound or fast-forwarded to. Preview frames (alternatively referred to as “thumbnails”) are typically generated at an external decoder, such as at a player device, based on i-frames of an encoded VOD content item. However, generating thumbnails at a player device may consume an unacceptably high amount of resources in mobile phones and other resource-restricted devices.